The most difficult and time consuming operation in the routine maintenance of a home swimming pool is the vacuum cleaning procedure and especially that part of the procedure involving the handling of the vacuum hose.
Once or twice a week depending on the season of year and weather conditions, it becomes necessary to remove excessive accumulations of dirt, leaves, etc., which have blown into the pool and settled to the bottom. For this purpose, nearly every pool owner has a vacuum hose and a pick-up head. The hose connects the pick-up head to the intake line of the pool filtration pump at the skimmer, and the pick-up head is attached to the end of a long pole which serves as a handle. The operator moves the pick-up head over the floor of the pool and the dirt is picked up, carried by the water through the hose and discharged to waste or retained by the pool filter. Leaves and bugs are caught by a screen ahead of the filter and may be removed.
A particularly difficult part of the vacuuming procedure which consumes a very significant part of the total time involved in the operation is the handling of the vacuum hose. For a family-size pool the hose may be forty or more feet long. It is made of plastic, has a diameter of approximately two inches and has stiffening ribs spaced at half-inch intervals along its length which enhance its ability to support the reduced internal pressure associated with the pump vacuum. The hose is relatively inflexible and difficult to handle and it gets tangled easily. It is also difficult to coil and uncoil for storage and use. In addition, it is necessary to remove the air from inside the hose by filling it with water before it is connected to the pump so that the prime of the pump will not be lost. Such an occurrence can result in damage or excessive wear to the pump.
In the usual method for clearing air from the hose, the operator throws the hose into the pool, attaches one end to the pick-up head, and then, beginning at the same end and working along the length of the hose, he pushes the normally floating hose under the surface, causing it to fill with water. A pool brush attached to a pole is often used as a tool. This method is time consuming and not always totally effective so that air pockets may remain. The pockets of air momentarily cause interruptions in the prime of the pump during the initial period following connectionof the hose to the pump inlet.
After the vacuum operation has been completed, the hose is removed from the pool, drained of water and, in the more ordered households, it is hung up on pegs affixed to a fence or to the side of a building. Again, because the hose is so unwieldy, this is a difficult, awkward and time consuming procedure. Furthermore, the handling of the hose as it twists, turns and tangles is detrimental to the hose itself and causes its useful life to be significantly shortened.
For these reasons a better means is needed for handling the vacuum hose including means for storing the hose, for dispensing it into the pool and for removing the air prior to making connection to the pump.